


Brooklyn, Before

by yunhaiiro



Series: The calm before the storms [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artist Steve Rogers, Boxing & Fisticuffs, Domestic Fluff, Gen, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Slash, cop bucky, the good ol' days
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-21 23:58:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14296272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yunhaiiro/pseuds/yunhaiiro
Summary: Before the war, before Captain America, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes are just two young guys in a Brooklyn apartment trying to get by.Bucky tries to get Steve to stop getting his ass handed to him all the time.Steve tries to get Bucky to relax and try drawing for a change.





	1. Training Team

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to my beta and co-conspirator who inspires me all the time, right now to write about these boys, [dfotw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dfotw)

Bucky comes home one day to find Steve with a black eye.

He’s sitting on the sofa, minding his own business, but the bruise stands out against his fair complexion.

At least he seems to be able to keep that eye open.

Bucky lets out an exasperated sigh and Steve looks up at him without raising his head, as if that will make him not realize.

“Really?”

“You should see the other guy.”

“Who was it this time?” asks Bucky, standing in front of him with his arms crossed.

Steve has the gall to smile a little.

“Does it matter?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“No. But I like to hear your justifications. They get real creative.”

“Just a jerk who catcalled a lady”, Steve also crosses his arms and reclines back, looking up defiantly at Bucky. Up close, he notices the bruise is actually on his upper cheekbone and his temple and not the eye proper. “She thanked me afterwards, you know.”

“Oh, good”, Bucky says flatly. “Did you at least put something cold on it?”

“Not yet, I just got here mys-”

Bucky is already going out the door to buy some ice.

 

* * *

 

Two days later, the bruise has already gone from purple to sickly green, and the edges are turning yellow. Steve acts like it was never a big deal.

They’re both in the living room, as usual, and Bucky is frowning watching Steve’s face, while Steve himself ignores him by reading one of his war history books.

Bucky makes a decision and stand up.

“Get up”, he says to Steve.

“What”, Steve answers.

Bucky takes the book from him, ignoring his protests, and leaves it open face down on the coffee table.

“Get up. I’m teaching you how to box.”

“What’s gotten into you?”

“If you’re going to pick a fight with everything that moves, at least let’s make sure you land a punch sometimes.”

Steve looks dubious then gets up, still with the same expression.

“First I’ll teach you the basics, then I’ll show you how to actually win a fight”

“Fighting dirty?”

Bucky smirks.

“You got it.”

They both move to the middle of the room, so they can maneuver. Bucky stands in front of him with his arms crossed.

“Now put your hands up.”

“You know, that’s more convincing when you’re in uniform.”

Bucky taps him lightly on his forehead with a finger.

“Don’t smartass me, Rogers. You need to cover your face at all times.”

“My arms get tired.”

“You don’t say”. Another tap, this time on his nose. “Seriously. It’s very easy to break someone’s nose.”

Steve stretches his arms in front of him, then puts his fists up.

“Good.”

“I can’t see like this.”

Bucky makes an exasperated sound.

“Put them at eye level, not over them.”

Steve drops them an inch.

“Now put your left foot forward and bend your knees a little.”

Steve glares at him from over his knuckles.

“How will this hel-”

Bucky hooks his foot behind Steve’s ankle and drags it towards him, firmly but still gently enough that it doesn’t knock Steve off-balance and face-first into the floor.

“Here.”

To his credit, Steve instinctively bends his knees and recovers pretty quickly. Bucky smirks.

“See. It’s hard to fall if you have a good stance.”

“When do we get to the punching so I can wipe that smile off your face?”

“When you’re actually standing right. Keep that foot straight. Turn your right one outwards a bit.”

Bucky keeps directing Steve through some different stances, at some points standing at his side and demonstrating them himself, and Steve snarks through all of it but still tries to emulate him as best as he can.

“I think that’s enough for one day.”

Steve drops his arms with an audible puff of breath.

“You could’ve just taken me dancing instead of this.”

“Let’s focus on one thing at a time, okay.”

 

* * *

 

They do get to the punching the next day.

The first thing Bucky teaches him is how to bandage his hands,even though they’re not going to use boxing gloves (because they don't have any).

Bucky demonstrates on himself, while Steve follows him. This has become the usual dynamic for these classes. Steve does fine for his left hand, but can’t quite get it right on the other and Bucky ends up bandaging that one himself. Steve is sitting on the couch, so Bucky kneels at his side and wraps the bandage with a firm hand, but still asking at every turn if it’s too tight. Steve just shakes his head every time.

Once that’s over with, they both get up and get to work.

It goes as well as any one of them expected. Bucky keeps to his teacher role and only shows Steve the moves then asks him to repeat them, then corrects his form (and, more irritatingly, his stance).

Steve gets winded up a few minutes in, and Bucky lets him take a break.

“I hate this.” Steve’s sitting against the wall. Didn’t even make it to the sofa.

Bucky is still throwing some punches into the air to keep warm.

“Eh. You get used to it.”

“And then you like it?” Steve raises a disbelieving eyebrow.

“Oh, hell no. It still sucks. But you’re used to it.”

Steve sighs.

“Do you really think this will help?”

Bucky looks back at him over his shoulder.

“I’ve gotten you out of fights before, right? This is how I do it.”

“Yeah, and the half a foot in height you have on me.”

Bucky stops and turns around.

“That  _is_  something I wanted to bring up”. He approaches Steve and extends a hand to help him stand up. Steve takes it.

“You can’t fight like me-” and Bucky pulls him up.

“No shit.” Breathing still not quite normal, Steve holds on to his hand a second more than necessary.

“Let me finish, damn it. We have very different body types…”

Steve can’t help but snort.

“… so you have to play to your strengths.”

“What’s my strength, Buck? Inspiring pity?”

Bucky shakes his head at him.

“You can’t brute force your way through a fight. But if you know where to aim your punches you can take any guy by surprise.”

Steve takes a breath (still somewhat shakily) and holds his fists up.

“Alright. Enlighten me.”

 

* * *

 

“I brought something.”

Steve looks up from his book (the same one from last time, Bucky notices).

“What?”

Bucky tosses a pair of actual boxing gloves into his lap, saying a cheerful “Ta-da” when they land. Steve holds up the book to keep them from knocking it over but doesn’t let it go.

“Borrowed them from the gym. Thought you would at least like to know how they felt.”

“Yeah, Buck, about that…”, dubious words, said with a dubious tone.

Bucky’s smile falters.

Steve tries a last-second save.

“I thought fighting dirty was the next thing? I’m not trying to  _actually_  get into boxing.”

Bucky's chuckle sounds a bit uncomfortable.

“Right. Yeah. You’re right.”

Steve leaves the book to his side, gathers the gloves and stands up, leaving them back in Bucky’s hands.

“I appreciate all of this. Really. But you know… it’s your thing.”

Bucky opens his mouth to argue, but a second later decides against it. Steve smiles at him, a bit sadly.

“It was just, you know… You get into too many fights I’m not there for. This is the least I can do.”

Steve says nothing to that.

Bucky looks away and scratches the back of his neck, now clearly uncomfortable. “Did it help, at least?”

“Sure. I can now bore people to death with how you’re supposed to stand for boxing.”

Bucky snorts.

Steve punches him lightly in the shoulder.

“But honestly, thanks. I know you wanted to help.”

“Yeah, well, I… I’ll probably just go and give these back”, he says, pointing at the gloves, and turns on his heels to leave.

Before he can reach the door, Steve calls after him.

“Is that from the gym you box at, then?”

“Yeah.”

“Do they have competitions?”

Bucky turns back around to glare at him.

Steve holds up his hands to placate him.

“Not for signing up myself! Just, you know, go watch you some time.”

“… they do. I’ll let you know.”

 

* * *

 

“You sure about this?”

“Why do you keep asking, Buck? They’re gonna try to knock you out, not me.”

“Well, some of the guys can be…” he gestures wildly.

“Assholes?”

Bucky’s shoulders slump down.

“Kind of. Yeah.”

“Kind of used to that, Bucky.”

“Alright.” Bucky shrugs and pushes the door open.

The smell inside punches harder than some of the guys that can be seen through the cigar smoke. Steve immediately starts coughing.

Bucky looks at him, concerned, but Steve gestures that he’s fine.

They go further in. A lot of people seem to recognize Bucky and slap him in the back as they go past them, wishing him good luck. Bucky thanks all of them and shakes hands with one or two who seem regulars, if only for how massive they are.

They stop before reaching one of the rings. The first row of people turn around and they also greet Bucky very enthusiastically.

Bucky leans over to say to Steve “These are the rookies. They can’t compete yet.”

Steve raises a hand in greeting since he’s getting curious looks. One of the men gets up from the chair and approaches them.

“Who’s that, James? Your little brother?”

“This is my friend Steve, Bob. Don’t be an asshole.”

The guy laughs and punches Bucky in the shoulder, who seems not to even notice it.

“I’m sorry, but he’s just so tiny! You can’t really see him from afar!”

“I’m right here and I can hear you.”

Bob actually crouches in front of Steve and says with all the mirth in his voice:

“I’m sorry, little fella. Is that better?”

Bucky can see it in slow motion: Steve closing his hand into a fist, then raising it, then punching Bob straight into the bridge of his nose, and Bob falling backwards, blood already streaming down his face.

Then Steve says:

“You should keep your hands up”.

Time goes back to normal and Bob stands up in one move and also punches Steve, narrowly missing his eye and also sending him down on his backside.

Before he can try to punch him again, Bucky steps between them and stares Bob down.

“Okay, a punch for a punch, you’re square. Now back off.”

Bob glares at him then at Steve, now sitting on the floor, but he yields and steps away.

Bucky helps Steve up from the floor. The goddamn jerk is smiling, even though the side of his face is already starting to swell.

 

* * *

 

“You didn’t have to throw the fight, you know. I’m fine.”

Bucky presses the ice a bit harder on him and Steve hisses.

“There’ll be another competition”, he answers. “But you’re not coming.”

“He deserved it”, Steve complains. “And I used what you taught me.”

Bucky can’t help but smile at that.

“I know.”

“See, this time, I can actually say ‘You should see the other guy’.”


	2. Drawing Days

1941

One morning, while going up to their flat, Bucky stays one second in front of the door and heaves a sigh.

When he opens it, he’s startled to find Steve inside, out and about. Steve looks up from what he’s doing (gathering fruit, for some reason) and arches an eyebrow.

“I live here too, you know.”

Bucky comes back to his senses and closes the door behind him.

“Sorry. Long night shift.”

Steve makes a sympathetic noise, already busy again.

“And it’s not normal to find you awake at this hour.”

“Yeah, well”, he says, carrying the handful of fruits to a coffee table he’s pushed over by the window. “Couldn’t really sleep.”

Bucky doesn’t prod. He just takes one apple from the pile and bites into it.

“Hey, I need that!”

“My stomach needed it more.”

Steve huffs, but seems to have a change of heart.

“You know what, after you’re done don’t throw it in the trash, just put it down over there again.”

“Sure.” Bucky is already halfway through eating it, anyway. He finishes and puts it next to its intact siblings.

Then he lets himself drop on the left side of the diminute sofa in the middle of the room and watches Steve pacing around gathering more things and muttering curses to himself when he can’t find something.

Finally, he settles down next to him, a stack of paper in one hand and a pencil in the other. Only to look up, scrunch his face at the fruit as if it had just insulted him, then hand him everything to hold it while he ambles over to the window and rearranges the fruit until he deems it acceptable.

Steve sits down once again and extends a hand to Bucky, without looking at him, still staring at his handiwork. After a beat, he hands the paper and pencil back.

Now Steve does look at him and says in a soft voice:

“You should just go to sleep.”

Bucky shakes his head and reclines a bit more on the sofa, away from Steve. He’ll get a better view of what he draws like this.

“’m fine here.”

Steve shrugs and holds the pencil over the paper at last. But thinks better of it, once again.

“Still life is pretty boring.”

Bucky also shrugs.

“I like watching you draw.”

Steve face twitches for an imperceptible nanosecond.

“… even so. D’you wanna draw it too?”

“What?”

Steve stands up again (no wonder he’s so skinny, he really can’t stay still) and comes back immediately with another pencil and, still standing and right in front of him, hands him that and one sheet of paper. He’s looking straight at Bucky, who looks (slightly) up from the tools in his hands to Steve’s face, and he can tell he’s not joking.

“Alright. Sure. It’s not gonna be pretty, but sure.”

Steve beams at him with one of his smirks then  _finally_  settles on his right and puts pencil to paper.

Bucky still takes a while to start because he’s looking at how Steve is doing it, then he tries to do the same. First the outline of the shapes. Then lines inside he guesses are for shadows.

The core of the apple he had eaten is browning before their very eyes with each passing minute.

Bucky looks over at Steve’s drawing once again. He’s trying really hard not to compare it to his own, but he can’t help it.

Steve looks deep in thought, tracing lines that are both soft and sure. Bucky tries imitating them, but he needs to draw the same line more than once because he can’t get them right in one try and the drawing ends up looking more like dark scribbles.

Steve is already shadowing, diagonal lines in one direction then criss-crossing, then smudging.

Bucky looks at Steve’s hands.

“You know you missed a spot?”

Steve blinks out from whatever trance he was in and holds his paper away to get a better look at it.

“Where? And I’m not even finished-”

“There”, then Bucky points at his fingers. “Your pinky is still flesh-colored instead of grey.”

Steve chuckles and holds up his dirty hand towards Bucky’s face menacingly. He catches him by the wrist before he reaches it.

“Don’t do that.”

“You know your hands are also dirty, right?”

Bucky lets go and sure enough, he had left an imprint of his fingerprints on Steve’s wrist.

“Shit. Sorry.”

Steve shrugs with one arm, already using that hand to smudge another set of lines. “Welcome to the life of the artist.”

Bucky scoffs and holds up his drawing next to Steve’s.

“Yeah, I’m obviously made for this.”

Steve looks at it.

“It’s not bad. You just have to practice.”

“You’re just being nice.”

“To you? Always. I know how fragile your ego is.”

Bucky flicks his ear with a (dirty) finger and Steve starts laughing. The asshole.

“No, but seriously. You don’t have to earn a living from it, but it’s still nice to be able to do something.”

“Is that what you tell yourself.”

“Hurtful”. Steve’s smiling nonetheless.

Bucky puts down his drawing and sighs.

“I already earn a living, remember.”

Steve shakes his head.

“Yeah, and we all know your dream is to be the umpteenth Irish beat cop with the shitty shifts.”

Bucky leaves the drawing and the pencil on the floor in front of him.

“It keeps us fed.”

Steve also stops drawing to look at him seriously.

“I know, Buck. And I’m not faulting you anything. But I’m not wrong, am I? You don’t actually like it.”

Bucky opens and closes his hands, shrugs, sighs.

“It’s not that bad. The guys are nice. The work is… well, I like to think I help people.”

Steve looks away for a second and something gets left unsaid.

“I’m not telling you to drop it. I’m just saying, it’s good to have other things in your life.”

   
   _But I have you_    


Is what Bucky most definitely doesn’t say.

“So. Drawing?”

“Why not?”

“Well it’s…” he gestures wildly for a moment. “… it’s your thing.”

Steve actually laughs at that.

“It isn’t! I’m barely above average, come on.”

Bucky doesn’t even know how to start refuting that, so he doesn’t. Steve is already talking again.

“Tell you what. There’s a drawing class at uni next Sunday. Why don’t you come?”

“The 7th?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah, I don’t know…”

“C’mon. We were having fun, right?”

   
   _I was watching you more than anything_    


Is another thing Bucky definitely doesn’t say.

Steve is looking at him like he can’t understand why he’s being unreasonable.

Bucky holds up his palms in defeat.

“Alright, alright. Stop with the puppydog eyes.”

Steve puff up.

“I am not-”

“Do you know anyone at that class?”

Steve looks pensive then suspicious.

“Some acquaintances. People I’ve seen before. Why?”

Bucky leers. “Any cute girls?”

Steve shakes his head, exasperated.

“Really?”

“I’m just saying, give me a good reason to go and skip church. What if I go to Hell because of you?”

“Then I’ll probably be there too and at least we’ll keep each other’s company.”

Bucky smirks, hiding a genuine smile.

“Alright, if it’s so important to you, I’ll go. But you owe me one.”

“Don’t try to make it sound like you’re doing me a favor. It’s the other way around.”

Bucky chuckles and throws his head back over the back of the sofa, now too tired to keep bickering.

Steve stands up and carefully picks up Bucky’s drawing from the floor. He sets both that and his own on top of the kitchen counter, standing up against the wall so they’re visible.

Bucky still thinks his attempt is nothing special, but Steve looks pretty proud of it so he allows himself a little bit of that too.

He is going to the art class mostly to make Steve happy, but a part of him is saying that maybe he will genuinely like it. Maybe it will change something in his life. A hobby wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Of course, the art class is on December 7, 1941, and that day everything does change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are endlessly appreciated!


End file.
